A journalist and historian with London's Times, Graham Stewart traces 2,000 years in the progress of an island—from Roman frontier province to first-rank 21st-century nation-state—through 100 documents. In the 8th-century Lindisfarne Gospels and that testament of Norman bureaucracy, the Domesday Book, in the designs for the Union Jack in 1606 and Neville Chamberlain's 1938 Munich agreement with Hitler, these works, treaties, charters, and other records embrace the full range of national endeavor. Here too you'll find the first edition of the Times, the rules of the newly formed Marylebone Cricket Club, the designs for Stephenson's Rocket and Mitchell's Spitfire, the Catholic Emancipation Act, Lord Kitchener's iconic First World War recruitment poster, Clause Four of the Labour Party's constitution, and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album cover.